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Manfred Gerlach

East German politician whose instinct for compromise could not keep pace with popular demand for sweeping democratic reform

October 25 2011, 1:01am, The Times

Manfred GerlachKlaus Franke / EPA

For a few extraordinary months in 1989 and 1990 Manfred Gerlach was head of state of a country, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), at the centre of global attention.

As that country’s communist leadership lost credibility Gerlach, head of a notionally independent Liberal party and a cautious if belated critic of the regime, was given the top constitutional job. He hobnobbed with such visitors as President François Mitterrand of France, the new Czechoslovak head of state Vaclav Havel and the British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd. His pronouncements were eagerly absorbed by an international media fascinated with this German drama.

Yet Gerlach, like so many at that time, had no idea how swiftly events would move. He assumed that he was part of a new arrangement…